Andrew D. Kirch posted an interesting comment today. He said that Rahm Emanuel was one of the top ten jack asses. I pondered the matter. I asked what parameters should be set for such a ranking. Just U.S.? All time? Andrew said U.S./last 20 years.

   Before we begin, a couple of points to be made.

   First, what is a "jack ass"? Other than a Male donkey," a "jack ass" is "a very stupid or foolish person."  American College Dictionary, 1962 ed. There is more to the…

   Yesterday—Friday—at about 5:30 we walked down to Broad Ripple. A few months ago, and especially before June 1, that was a time of day on a specific day of the week when the bars would be bustling. The week was over, the workday had ended, and people would be out to blow off steam. The sidewalks would be a bit crowded as people went from place-to-place.

   Yesterday’s weather was beautiful. The high reached 76 or 78 degrees. One would expect people to be out in droves.

  …

   Last night I was asleep by 9:00 and felt well-rested when I woke at 4 a.m. Various studies indicate that (1) a minimum of seven hours’ sleep per night provides one with optimum rest (2) sleep is best obtained on a regular basis so that the biological clock of one’s body runs on the same schedule and (3) if people comported their lives by these two factors, amongst other benefits, the national health would improve, people’s lives would be longer, and insurance rates would drop. I can cite…

   Mitt Romney’s failure to produce tax returns underlines a significant reason why he should not be president.

   In 2008, in an attempt to suck up to John McCain and be named the GOP’s candidate for VP, Romney provided 23 years of his income tax returns to McCain’s people. That is according to Steve Schmidt, a chief member of the McCain campaign team. Since that was reported at least one week ago, I have not heard anyone from Romney’s camp deny that claim.

   At the end of…

   "I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process."–President Benjamin Harrison (Republican), 1891.

   I am surprised to quote President B. Harrison positively. He was President of the United States during one of our worst periods of corporate excesses. Workers had no rights and labored for many hours while paid pennies. Workers’ protests were squelched by violence.

   By the 1970s, the American labor force…

   When I was a kid, we all (kids in the neighborhood) looked forward to the Howard County Fair. That was a must-see. A stop at the Lions Club tent for food came first. We would hit several other tents and be given various crap—amongst which always was a yard stick—for free. We had to walk through the farm implement area and sit on tractors and earth movers. The miscellaneous "big tent" seemed always to have a vacuum cleaner that kept a ping-pong ball suspended in air. The rides were the big…

   Gore Vidal died yesterday evening at the age of 86. He wrote a lot of books, screenplays, and essays. He seemed always good for a quote.

   My first recollection of him was his famous exchange with William F. Buckley on August 28, 1968, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Vidal was as far left as Buckley was far right. They were hired as commentators by ABC. In the streets of Chicago, what the Walker Commission later called a "police riot" had riveted the attention of…

   Where are the jobs of the future?

   In the years after World War II, American factories cranked out goods for all the people home from the War or who had been here waiting for loved ones to come home. Many people made things in factories. A college diploma was not necessary. A high school diploma was not necessary. Work on an assembly line generally paid well and provided good benefits.

   Construction trades required more skills, but paid more money and still required no…

   The week has been chaotic, fun, educational, and humbling. I also should say it was "mnd-blowing," but the limit of one gerund to a paragraph already has been reached.

   I had "pre-conceived notions" about what we would encounter at the Indianapolis International Film Festival. I worked in and around theater in college and for a short time after. There were great people in that world. However, there are only so many times one could bear to hear an actor describe how he prepared…

   We will shoot from the Indianapolis Museum of Art today at 4:30. We will not stream live, so there will be about a two-hour delay between videotaping and everything going on the internet.

   4:30. Matt Mays is the director of "The Greatest Return," a documentary about environmentalists who have attempted new approaches to deal with the way in which the world has changed and to save the species that are in danger of extinction.

   5:00.  Ronald Short is a Hoosier and…

Colorado Chaos

   "When mindless acts of terror (is the phrase redundant?) occur in the world, will people please not immediately ascribe those acts to believers of Islam?"

   I wrote those words exactly one year ago (07/23/11) tomorrow, after the nut went crazy in Norway and killed 84 people. Thursday night we had another episode of insanity, but here in the States. ABC did a lousy job (as in: check sources, don’t just Google® someone’s name) and tried to link…

  As I wrote yesterday, "Civil Discourse Now" will cover the Indianapolis International Film Festival. The festival opened Thursday night and runs through Sunday, July 29^th.

  Today our guest will be Indianapolis native and director Adam Newell, whose film "Video Stop" will be shown Monday night. We shall be shooting "Civil Discourse Now" from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, from the Nourish Case just inside the entrance (to the right). We hope to shoot a couple of shows…

   "Civil Discourse Now" will cover the Indianapolis International Film Festival. The festival opened last night and runs through Sunday, July 29^th. This is a different direction for subjects of interest for The Show. We are not just about politics.

   The Festival’s website gives times of flicks and locations. Most of the movies will be shown at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, but also at the Earth House, 237 North East Street. You can check out details at…

   We are supposed to be overjoyed at the prospects of Indianapolis playing host to Super Bowl LII®. City leaders have boasted of the money the last Super Bowl® brought to Indianapolis. Those leaders overlook some of the financial incentives Indianapolis extended to the NFL®, such as the NFL® not having to pay certain taxes.

   The City came up with a study that showed we "made" $152 million from acting as the host city of the last Super Bowl.® The report is from Rockport Analytics,…

Indianapolis municipal code bars people under 18 from purchasing condoms and vibrators, under the Orwellian mantra of "promoting the public morals, health, peace and security in the city".  Safe sex and masturbation are good things.

Municode link: http://tinyurl.com/7v9ql2y

   We stream "live" on Ustream®. I was unaware that The Show has a link to the website and automatically provides access to archived shows. I should have taken that course in FORTRAN in undergrad.

   Yesterday’s Show was great. A lot of people showed up at The Recovery Room Lounge to show their opposition to the smoking ban in Indy. There were a lot of interesting points made:

-ALL of the bar owners noted loss of business since the ban took effect.

-Other businesses—juke…

   In 2005, the City-County Council passed, and Mayor Peterson signed into law, restrictions on smoking in public places. The first section of that ordinance, Sec. 616-101, delineates the reasons for the ordinance. Under the title "Findings and Intent," Sec. 616-101 cites secondhand smoke (SHS), a/k/a environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), as a "major contributor to indoor air pollution," "a cause of disease in nonsmokers, including heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, and lung cancer." …

   From the Recovery Room Lounge, 1868 Lafayette Road on Saturday, July 14, 2012, we shall shoot Civil Discourse Now. The starting time will be 2 p.m., a departure from our usual, as the location is host to a special event.

   The first segment of The Show will be "What’s Going On," 14 minutes of discussion of three or four headline items.

   The rest of The Show will be about the smoking ban Indianapolis put into effect on June 1. People who are opposed to the ban should come…

   One aspect of Indianapolis’s recently-amended smoking ordinance is that it is a ban. Unless a person is a member of a private club, or is in a casino or off-track betting establishment (referred to as a "satellite" in the ordinance) she or he cannot smoke a cigarette inside the premises of a business in this county. Cigar smokers still can smoke, but only in (again) private clubs that vote to allow smoking or cigar bars. Cigarette smokers cannot smoke in cigar bars.

   The Indy…

   Congress bailed out the big banks with the idea that the money given promptly would be lent out to the public and the economy, thereby, would be stimulated. Some estimates put the amounts received as high as $16trillion. The idea, that the big banks promptly would lend the money, turned out to be wrong. The big banks—JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, the usual suspects—have sat on the monies they received. I guess they await a rainy day. Given the severe drought conditions in…